Thessalonica

through the streets were themselves remarkable, but he kept quiet.

The district by the citadel, up in the northeastern part of the city, was where the rich people lived. One of the privileges of being rich was taking shelter in the citadel if the city wall was breached. George went slowly; he seldom came to that part of town. From the outside, the house he was looking for wouldn’t be much different from its neighbors. And, in the darkness, the differences were next to impossible to make out.

“I don’t want to knock on the wrong door,” the shoemaker muttered. “I really don’t want to knock on the wrong door.”

At last, he found what he thought was the right door. He tried it, gently, so as not to disturb anyone inside. It was barred. He muttered again. He’d known it would be, but had hoped that, just this once, life would make things easy for him. No such luck. He rapped loudly on the door, as if he had every right in the world to go straight in. When nothing happened, he rapped again, even louder.

A tiny window with a metal grate was set into the timbers of the door. After a little while, a small part of a face, dimly lit by a lamp or taper, appeared on the other side of the window. “Who disturbs Menas’ rest at this ungodly hour?” asked a voice presumably connected to the face.

“I am an angel,” George announced. He stood very close to the door, so the servant inside could tell where his voice was coming from--and could note that he was hearing it without being able to see anyone speaking. “I am come to test both you and your master. Open at once, or you will share his fate.”

In a way, this was the weak part of his plan, and he knew it. If Menas’ servant liked the rich noble and was loyal to him, he would leave the door closed, and George wouldn’t be able to get in. The only thing invisibility would be good for then was to keep anyone from seeing how foolish he looked.

Coming to Menas’ home, though, he’d pinned his hopes on the idea that no one who knew Menas and had to work for him was likely to like him. And so it proved. The door flew open. The servant said, “If you want Menas, you can bloody well have him!”

“You have passed your test,” George said, and squeezed past the fellow, careful not to touch him as he did so.

Lamps set in wall niches lighted the halls of Menas’ home; George wished he could have afforded to use oil so prodigally. There were a lot of corridors, too--he wandered for a bit before finding the one that led to Menas’ bedchamber The noble’s own snores guided the shoemaker down the corridor to the proper room.

There, dim shadows, lay Menas and his wife. She snored, too. George took a deep breath, then shouted at the top of his lungs: “Injustice!”

Both shapes sat up in bed and looked around wildly. Menas started to cry out. George whacked him with the flat of his blade. The rich noble tried to reach down under the bed, where he likely kept a sword of his own. George stepped on his hand.

About then, Menas realized that, while he could hear and feel whoever was in the chamber with him, he couldn’t see anyone but his wife. “Injustice!” George shouted again. Menas’ wife opened her mouth to scream. George yelled once more: “Silence!”

Menas’ wife didn’t scream. The noble did: “Ho! My men! Help! To me! A murder! To me!”

George whacked him again. He howled. Down the hall, George heard the servants stirring. That was liable to be trouble. If they came after him, they could trap him in these narrow halls without having to see him. Then, if he wanted to escape, he’d have to cut his way through them, which he hadn’t intended to do.

But the servants did not come to Menas’ rescue. Instead one after another, they ran outside, into the chilly night. Maybe the doorman had told them what sort of visitor the household had. Maybe they weren’t interested in rescuing Menas any which way. George wouldn’t have been.

He laughed, unpleasantly. “You see what the wages of injustice are,” he boomed, trying to sound as impressive-- and as much unlike George the shoemaker--as he could.

“Who--who--who are you?” Menas, now, Menas sounded like an owl.

His wife had a different question: “What are you?”

“I am an angel,” George declared, as he had for the servant. Menas’ wife crossed herself. George had already seen--and was very glad--that that did not destroy the power in Perseus’ cap. He went on, speaking to Menas: “Wretch, God did not give you back your legs so that you could use your regained bodily vigor to wrong those who have done you no harm. The grave awaits such wickedness, the grave and eternal torment.”

He didn’t sound like himself. After a moment, he realized he did sound like Bishop Eusebius. That was all right, he supposed; angels could reasonably sound like churchmen. Churchmen certainly thought they sounded like angels.

“But--I’ve never done anything like that.” This was not the angry, blustering Menas George had come to know and loathe. This was a frightened Menas. But it was also an utterly bewildered Menas. With no small shock, George realized the noble had no idea he’d done anything wrong or reprehensible.

Hesitantly, Menas’ wife spoke up: “Maybe, dear, maybe the angel means that shoemaker who was persecuting you.”

George felt like kissing her, though that wouldn’t have done his impersonation any good. If he’d had to mention himself, Menas was liable to have put two and two together.

On the other hand, maybe he wouldn’t have. Menas seemed to have trouble putting one and one together. “That Gregory or George or whatever his name was?” he exclaimed. “Not likely! He deserved whatever happened to him, the way he spread lies about me through the city.”

He never knew how close he came to having his big belly ripped open by a sword he never saw. “Fool!” George shouted. “Arrogant idiot!” He whacked Menas with the flat of the blade again. The temptation to let it turn in his hand, to slash instead of whacking, was as strong in his mouth as the maddening taste of wine in a centaur’s. Menas cringed. Fighting down the urge to murder, George went on, “Being a liar and a cheat yourself, you reckon all men possessed of a like mean-spiritedness.” He knew he was stealing that phrase from Father Luke, but did not think the priest would mind. “The shoemaker told you the truth: he did not slander you.”

Menas hadn’t even bothered to remember his name. That infuriated him more than almost anything else.

“Really?” The rich noble sounded astonished. “Everyone said he did.”

“And you believed gossips and liars, not the man himself,” George said scornfully. “Know you not what rumor and gossip are worth?” He still thought Menas hadn’t listened very well to what “everybody” said, too, but kept quiet about that, not wanting to escape trouble by putting John into it.

“What must he do to be saved?” Menas’ wife asked the question, perhaps because she thought her husband wouldn’t.

Stirred by that, Menas spoke up, in a petulant voice: “I suppose you’re going to tell me I have to pay him ten pounds of gold, or something outrageous like that.” He stuck out his chin and looked stubborn.

Did he suspect George was George, and not an angel at all? Or had he been visited by a veritable angel before, and made to pay compensation for whatever he’d done to prompt the visit? George wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He answered, “Leave the man at peace and trouble him no more. That will suffice. Obey me not, and the grave and the pangs of hell await you.”

“I’ll obey,” Menas said quickly. “I will.” Now he sounded perfectly tractable. George wondered why. It occurred to him that, if Menas were an angel (an unlikely thought), he would have demanded money in exchange for good behavior. George’s not doing so must have struck the noble as particularly holy, even downright angelic.

He didn’t mind Menas’ thinking him holy. He didn’t want Menas thinking him soft. He walloped the noble with the flat of the blade again, and shouted, “Obey!”

By then, Menas’ head was probably ringing like a gong. George hoped he hadn’t broken that head, although his own heart wouldn’t have broken if it turned out he had.

Deciding the wisest thing he could do was not overstay his welcome, he left the bedchamber then. For good measure, he slammed the door shut behind him, which made Menas’ wife scream. George didn’t mind that; if she was impressed with him as an angel, she would help hold her husband to the straight and narrow.

As things were, George discovered he’d almost stayed too long. After fleeing the house, a couple of servants had nerved themselves to go back inside. “We’d better see if there’s anything left of the boss,” the one in front said to the other, who seemed to be doing his best to walk in his footprints.

“Hope not,” the one behind him said--but he said it quietly, in case Menas should have disappointed his hopes.

George flattened himself against the wall of the corridor. That just gave the servants room to squeeze past without touching him. As soon as they were past, he shouted “Beware!” and ran for the door. Their frightened shouts rang most enjoyably in his ears as he dashed out into the night.

More servants were coming toward the house. So were a couple of neighbors. So was a priest; the church of the Archangels wasn’t far away, and somebody must have run and fetched him. George wasn’t sure the power in Perseus’ cap could survive an exorcism aimed directly at it. Then again, he didn’t have to put it to the test, and he didn’t. Hoping--and praying a little, too--the lesson he’d given Menas would stick, he dodged around the people cautiously approaching and headed home.

John said, “Let me make sure I understand this. You hung around in the woods until the Slavs and Avars got driven away. Then you came back into Thessalonica through one of the gates we opened to come out and chase ‘em.”

“That’s right,” George said. And it was right. It omitted a good deal--and all the most interesting parts--but it was the essence of what had happened. George was as well pleased to have the interesting parts omitted.

John rolled his eyes. “There’s only two problems with it. The first one is, I don’t believe a word of it. How come nobody saw you coming in?”

“I don’t know,” George answered stolidly. He’d said the same thing whenever any of his friends asked him that question. Even more stolidly, he went on, “I suppose everybody was too busy staring at the herd of centaurs to pay any attention to one ordinary shoemaker.”

The tavern comic grunted. “If I hadn’t seen them with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe that, either. I’m still not sure I do.”

“Fine. Don’t believe it, then. Believe we’re still under siege,” George said. “Me, I’m going to go out there and do some hunting.” The Litaean Gate loomed up ahead of the two men.

“That’s the other reason I don’t believe the story you’re telling,” John said. “If I’d been dodging Slavs for however long it was, I wouldn’t want to stick my nose outside the wall now. There are still barbarians skulking through the woods, you know. You remind me of the clever fellow during the storm at sea. He saw everybody else on the ship grab something to save himself with, so he took hold of the anchor.”

“Heh,” George said. “Have you used that one at Paul’s place yet, or are you trying it out on me first?”

“I’m trying to keep you from getting killed,” John said with some asperity. “I thought you’d gone and done it once, with a little help from your friend Menas, but then you came back again-- however you came back again.” He gave George a dark look. “And now you want to go out there some more. You used to be such a sensible fellow.”

“I’m sensible enough to know when I need to do some hunting,” George said. Someone else went out of the Litaean Gate. George pointed. “See? I’m not the only one, either. Why don’t you nag him for a while?”

“I’m not his mother--I’m your mother,” John said, which startled a grunt of laughter out of George. John threw his hands in the air. “All right, go ahead. See if I care. But if you come back dead, don’t run crying to me saying I didn’t warn you.”

George contemplated following that through to its logical conclusion, but his own logical conclusion was that it didn’t have one. He walked out through the gate. When he looked back, John was still framed in the gateway, staring out after him. The tavern comic shook his head and turned back toward the center of the city. George headed out to the woods.

Once trees and brush screened him from view, he took Perseus’ cap out of the large leather wallet he was wearing on his belt in place of the more usual pouch. John had assumed he’d be bringing small game back to Thessalonica in it. He would, too, if he caught any. Meanwhile, though, the pouch let him take the cap out unnoticed. As soon as he put the cap on his head, he was unnoticed, too.

He headed north, toward Lete. When he got farther up into the hills, he intended to take off the cap, in the hope that a centaur or satyr would find him then and guide him to the pagan village, which he was still unsure of finding without such aid. In the meantime, he killed several rabbits that, thanks to Perseus’ cap, never knew he was there. It wasn’t sporting, but he wasn’t hunting for sport--he was hunting for the pot.

He spent the night in a chilly bed of leaves and boughs. Early the next morning, noises from beyond the brush ahead made him move forward cautiously. He had seen a couple of small bands of Slavs in the woods: poor, hungry-looking fellows for whom he would have felt more sympathy had he not known they would have cut his throat if he were visible. If he was coming up on another such,